Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
Yemen Houthi Rebel

The United Nations said Yemen’s warring parties have on Tuesday, agreed to initiate its withdrawal from the main port of Hodeidah under a deal sponsored by the United Nations, following several weeks of diplomacy to deliver a pact that has stalled over the control of Red Sea city.

According to Reuters news reports, the Saudi-backed government and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement has agreed in December last year to withdraw forces from Hodeidah port city by January 7 under a truce which was aimed at ruling out a full-scale assault over the port and laying a way for negotiations to put an end to the four-year-long civil war.

In a statement, without providing more details, the UN spokesperson’s office said, “The parties reached an agreement on Phase 1 of the mutual redeployment of forces.”

Under Phase 1, the Houthi, warring party, would pull out from Hodeidah port city, Saleef. This move would be met by a retreat of Saudi-led coalition forces from the outskirts of Hodeidah (eastern), where the battles have raged before a truce went into effect on December 18.

Head of the Houthis’ supreme revolutionary committee Mohammed Ali al-Houthi has said its forces would withdraw about 5 km from the ports, while the government had retreated by 1 km from seven areas, in the eastern region of Hodeidah city.

The UN statement noted that both the sides have also agreed “in principle” over Phase 2, requiring full redeployment of both the parties’ forces in Hodeidah city.

One source told Reuters: “The U.N. is still discussing how to reduce the gap between the two sides on how to choose the forces that will control the city.”

The parties are allowed to decide within seven to ten days whether they want to re-position they forces or not, said the second source, adding Houthis could pull itself back as far as about 20 km from the port in Phase 2.

A U.N. source told Reuters, under the Phase 1, the two sides agreed to reopen the main roads linking Hodeidah to Sanaa, the Houthi-held capital, and in Yemen’s third city of Taiz. The government forces’ retreat would enable access to the Red Sea mills, which reportedly holds about 50,000 tonnes of world food programme grain, enough to feed about 3.7 million people in a month.

In a Twitter post, al-Houthi said: “The grains could be transported from the Red Sea Mills and the humanitarian aid would be allowed to pass through within 11 days.”

Senior analyst at International Crisis Group Elizabeth Dickinson said: “One of the problems with this process so far has been that there are political agreements on how to make progress, but then nothing happens on the ground,” adding, “Now we theoretically have this agreement to move forward, we need to see someone move on the ground.”

 

 

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